Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Musk, Hawking Warn of Artificial Intelligence Weapons - Digits - WSJ

"Famed astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, Tesla Motors Inc. founder Elon Musk and Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Wozniak are among the signatories of a letter presented today calling for a ban on autonomous weapons. The missive, unveiled by the Future of Life Institute at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Argentina, labels autonomous weapons “the third revolution in warfare,” following gunpowder and nuclear arms.

“If any major military power pushes ahead with AI weapon development, a global arms race is virtually inevitable, and the endpoint of this technological trajectory is obvious: autonomous weapons will become the Kalashnikovs of tomorrow,” says the letter, which includes Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn and prominent linguist Noam Chomsky as endorsers . “Unlike nuclear weapons, they require no costly or hard-to-obtain raw materials, so they will become ubiquitous and cheap for all significant military powers to mass-produce.”"